Services vs. products: which is the main course, which -- the side dish?

Eugene Kaspersky
, ContributorI write about cyberthreats and how best to fight them.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Much of what we tend to believe about the world is based on stereotypes, and folks’ beliefs about the security industry are no exception. And we as a company suffer from those stereotypes.

For example, there’s a widely-held, yet wrong, belief that we develop only home (consumer) antivirus products, when really we’ve long been doing a lot more in addition to this – and not only for home computers.

Our share of revenue from business products and technologies (i.e., from the B2B market) currently stands at 40 per cent of the total, with sales growing faster in the B2B market than in the B2C market. In fact, in many countries, the sales of our personal products have reached saturation point, and are unlikely to increase further; while in the business segment, we’ve still plenty of growth opportunities.

So, we’ve plenty going on in terms of products. But products alone don’t guarantee success. Three other things need addressing at the same time:

First: the competition is very tough in this segment. Sure, on quality of protection we outclass it all, but there’s still room for improvement in terms of the number of platforms we cover, network management features, and integration with third-party systems.

Second: all corporate networks are complex; moreover, every single one is unique. And the bigger the project, the more that needs customizing to suit the specific conditions. For example, when introducing total protection for Ferrari, our pre-sales engineers spent almost a year at the factory tailor-making and fine-tuning products to meet all its specific requirements, and fully integrate the solution into the production cycle.

Third: alas, today more attention is paid to one’s passport than the quality of protection provided. Indeed, the current geopolitical climate brings all sorts of hindrances to the global enterprise segment.